Patrick Phillips-Schrock / Submitted photo

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Book signing

Des Moines author Patrick Phillips-Schrock will give a short talk about his book, “The White House: An Illustrated Architectural History,” at noon Tuesday at the DMACC Urban Campus book store in Building 1, 1100 Seventh St. Hardcover copies will be for sale.

Celebration of the Literary Arts

DMACC’s 11th annual festival is set for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, with free public events at various campuses. Here are a few of the guests:

Ron Carlson teaches writing at the University of California and has published several novels, plus short stories in the New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s and elsewhere. His book on writing, “Ron Carlson Writes a Story,” is taught widely.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil has published three collections of poetry — “Lucky Fish,” “At the Drive-In Volcano” and “Miracle Fruit” — and has won numerous honors, including the Pushcart Prize and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Caitlin Horrocks’ 2011 story collection, “This Is Not Your City” was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Her stories have appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review and many other publications.

Matthew Dickman edits poetry for Tin House magazine and has won numerous awards for his own poems, which he’s collected into several books, including “All-American Poem,” “50 American Plays” (co-written with his brother) and “Mayakovsky’s Revolver.”

All four writers will read from their works at 7 p.m. Monday at Beaverdale Books, and again from 9 a.m. to noon Wednesday at Building 2 at DMACC’s Ankeny Campus. Horrocks and Dickman will speak at 10 a.m. Monday at the school’s Boone Campus, and Carlson and Nezhukumatathil will speak at 11 a.m. Tuesday at Building 1 at DMACC’s Urban Campus in Des Moines.

Also in the lineup: University of Northern Iowa professor Jeremy Schraffenberger and Iowa Writers Workshop writer Deborah Kennedy will read from their work at 11:15 a.m. Monday at the Newton Campus.

Iowa Poet Laureate Mary Swander and Iowa State University visiting poet Heather Derr-Smith will read from their work at 9:40 a.m. Tuesday at the West Des Moines Campus.

David Wolf and former Datebook Diner Winifred Moranville, both from Simpson College, will read from their work at 11:15 a.m. Tuesday at the Carroll Campus.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Caitlin Horrocks

Matthew Dickman

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TO READERS: This article has been updated to reflect this correction: A Saturday story about writers' visits to central Iowa gave an incorrect time for the Monday literary reading featuring Ron Carlson, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Caitlin Horrocks, and Matthew Dickman at Beaverdale Books. The reading is at 7 p.m.

It took Patrick Phillips-Schrock 50 years to write a book about the White House, but he finally has the final product in hand. He’ll sign copies of the “The White House: An Illustrated Architectural History” on Tuesday at Des Moines Area Community College, during the school’s 11th annual literary festival.

“This was like the birth of a child,” said the author, who teaches French and American history at DMACC. “It’s been such a long project, with so many starts and stops.”

The research started in 1962, when he was 11 years old. He and his parents gathered around the TV in their Jefferson home to watch Jacqueline Kennedy’s famous tour of the White House. And just like that, an obsession was born: The young Phillips-Schrock wanted to learn everything about every corner of the building

The family drove out to Washington, D.C., that summer.

“I remember the brilliance of the Red Room,” which the Kennedys had lined with silk, Phillips-Schrock said. “The guards kept telling me, ‘Don’t touch the wall,’ which is different than what they said in the Nixon era: ‘Keep moving. Keep moving.’ ”

Phillips-Schrock spent a summer in Washington in 1969 and toured the house almost every day. He often sketched things in a notebook until the guards snatched it away. Then he’d just go outside, get back in line and start the tour again.

“I’m probably on a list,” he joked. “I’m sure they kept looking at this skinny kid and wondering, Why does he keep going through the house and asking us questions we can’t answer?”

He asked some of those questions in letters over the years to the White House curators, whose openness varied from one administration to the next. He made trips to the National Archives and the Kennedy Library in Boston. When the Internet came around, he tapped into the collective knowledge of other historic-preservation experts who posted notes on bulletin boards and Facebook.

And slowly, Phillips-Schrock cobbled together a comprehensive account of the building’s architecture, inside and out, and how different administrations have changed things over time. The pendulum swings back and forth between honoring the house’s original plan and adapting to modern times (which sounds a lot like debates elsewhere along the National Mall, about the Constitution).

Phillips-Schrock falls on the side of tradition, especially since the house was designed to be stylish but livable, rather than a stuffy museum. He once wrote to the curatorial staff about a set of antique French chairs that should have had matching cushions. The cushions showed up in a photo he spotted later.

“It’s a matter of history, of historical accuracy,” he said. “And I’d like them to get it right.”